Flametail Review

A new first-party puzzler that urges you to torch your trash.

Flametail is an inventive and addictive little puzzler with a science-fiction spin on a pro-environment message. Its story presents a future where mankind has not only filled the Earth with garbage, but also most of the surrounding planets -- and you control the Flametail pod, an interstellar spacecraft equipped to travel through the solar system and burn up all the refuse, piece by piece, using its signature flaming tail.

You turn your DSi sideways to hold it in "book mode" for Flametail, giving you a touch screen that's now taller than it is wide. Then your very small, just-a-few-pixels-big spacepod appears under your command, and you begin moving it around the screen one step at a time. The environment around you is filled with blocks (representing the garbage of humanity), and you have to maneuver your pod to touch each separate grouping of them. Then, the flaming tail that's constantly emitting from the back of your craft will cause the trash to ignite, then slowly burn itself out of existence.

The challenge is that the screen scrolls upward just a bit for every step you take, and if your ship, or any piece of your ship's tail, or any unburned block of trash ever hits the bottom of the screen -- game over. It's a bit like Rare's old N64 game Blast Corps, if you ever played that -- you're got to clear the path before it's too late, or boom. This is much more methodical than just mindless destroying everything on the screen, though -- you have to be constantly planning your moves and your position, making sure you're covering all your bases and never trapping your craft in a corner either.

A variety of power-ups also come into play, keeping the gameplay varied as you progress.

The Verdict

Those of you who've played the WiiWare release Maboshi's Arcade may remember the origin of this concept as that game's "Square" puzzle, so it might lose some points for originality with you. And Flametail's not going to earn any visual accolades, and it may very well be missed by many in the DSi Shop, even as a first-party release -- but puzzler fans definitely need to give this one a look. Any negative you could level against it just gets lost once you're fully addicted to scorching space trash out of the cosmos. I'm blasting off to go play more of it myself right now.